City Council Candidates Discuss Parking
Two incumbent and three challengers discuss their views on parking in downtown Havre de Grace.
Patch asked the candidates for the May 3 election to share their opinions on more than a dozen topics relating to the city.In this installment, City Council candidates—incumbents John Correri and Randy Craig, and challengers James Lauer, Diane Lawder, Lori Maslin and Barbara Wagner—address parking in downtown Havre de Grace:
John Correri
Correri is adamant about signage—which is one aspect the city has already begun to upgrade.Correri, a member of the Havre de Grace Ambulance Corps, is used to seeing cars give up by the time they hit the entrance to the corps’ headquarters on Rt. 155.
“The number of times you see people coming off of 95, that make the u-turns, and go back up because they don’t see the instant big signs. They don’t know they’re just a half a mile from McDonald’s, or something like that,” Correri said. “I often talk to our folks about trying to draw them a little bit further into town. Signage is huge.”
He’s been in support of the two other changes the City Council has put into action: motorcycle parking and the adjustment from two hours to three hours on the parking limits downtown.
The way Correri sees it: a parking problem is a good problem.
“I think its one of those things that’s ongoing,” he said. “I’d like to put it this way: I’d like to have parking problems. That means you have people downtown spending money.”
Randy Craig
Craig has concerns about the parking study, which was completed by The Chesapeake Group and presented recently.“I don’t think it’s complete,” Craig said. “I think it only does half the day. It only looked at the daytime hours, and certainly a bigger part of the problem is the evening hours. That’s when all the residents downtown are home and need to park. That’s when all the restaurants are operating. They have the largest number of employees in the downtown businesses, and a lot of the largest square footages. So there’s more need for vehicles.”
One area Craig thinks can be improved immediately is in police enforcement of current parking regulations.
“My main concern is consistency, not just downtown, but throughout the city,” Craig said. “We have issues where people park on yellow curbs, in fire lanes, we have issues with the street sweeper—a lot of people don’t move their vehicles for that. That’s a constant concern downtown and I think it needs to be enforced in a consistent way. In my view, the police department has sufficient resources presently to do that sort of enforcement. I think they need to be deployed, perhaps, in a different way to achieve that result.”
But Craig wants more information on parking in the evenings, on weekends, and during peak season before proceeding with action.
“As far as substantial changes to our parking procedures, I don’t know that I support that without more data,” Craig said. “I’m a firm believer in data-driven decision-making, and I don’t think the data we have is enough to make an effective decision at this point.”
James Lauer
Lauer did not respond to repeated interview requests from Patch.Diane Lawder
Lawder sees parking as one issue with a number of sub-issues.Namely, it’s a problem impacting a varying degree of community groups: citizens, employees, business owners and visitors.
“I don’t think any one group is on the same page with the parking issue,” Lawder said. “What do you want to enforce? What’s a possible solution? I don’t think anybody at this point has one. You can throw meters into it, but nobody wants meters downtown. We’re the one city that doesn’t have meters. Is it something that would help the issue, and generate revenue for the city? Yes. But people don’t want to hear that. It’s difficult. There are a lot of issues with that one issue.”
While she understands there may be issues with seniors or disabled citizens needing parking closer to their destinations, Lawder has never had an issue parking during the day.
“Evening hours, Friday, Saturday nights, it gets a little hectic,” she said. “I don’t have an issue with having to park two blocks away and walking.”
And within those evening hours, Lawder isn’t sure how parking for restaurants really affects other local businesses.
“Local businesses downtown aren’t opened past 5 o’clock. Then you have the restaurant crowd or the bar crowd,” she said. “It’s not really affecting the local business owners.”
But she understands the concerns of citizens who come home to find no parking in front of their residence: “If I’m coming home on a Friday night and I go to the grocery store, I don’t want to have to walk three blocks with arms full of groceries.”
Lori Maslin
Maslin isn’t sure there’s a real parking problem in Havre de Grace.Having owned a business in downtown Havre de Grace for years, she knows that business owners can control the issue on their own.
“The biggest problem is the same problem that we have today. It is business owners and their employees parking all day long in the prime spots,” Maslin said. “During the day during the week may not be such a terrible thing, and it may not be a terrible problem. It may be a good thing in the sense of it makes it appear we have a bustling downtown because there are cars. I know that is kind of cynical. But the problem is, during the weekends and in-season, that’s when it causes a problem.”
Maslin had her employees “park off the main streets, behind the building, as far away as possible.”
She’s a proponent of better signage and creating dialogue with businesses to open up prime parking areas. She also thinks people can be more mindful when parking, suggesting to plan out your route if you’re making multiple stops and park centrally before walking to your various destinations.
Enforcement is key to Maslin, too.
“I don’t think there’s much of a parking issue, I think there’s more of a parking enforcement issue. And we have to be willing to enforce it,” she said. “There are others who have said this and its true: you go to a big city, and you get a parking ticket, it doesn’t mean you’re not coming back. If you get a parking ticket, you pay it.”
Barbara Wagner
Wagner has a unique perspective on downtown parking—owning a business on Union Avenue with a residence above it.She compiled complaints and concerns from the community a year ago and presented them to the Mayor and City Council, along with some suggested actions to solve parking. Ultimately, she sees parking as more of an issue in the future.
“I think the main parking problem downtown is that we don’t have enough business downtown to have a real parking problem downtown,” Wagner said. “Thinking positive and looking forward, we will have more business downtown. So we will, at some point, run into parking problems. For example, when, not if, when the theatre comes together, we’re going to need some place for those people to park.”
In the meantime, Wagner is a proponent for better signage, and installing a sticker program, where citizens and employees would buy a sticker to be displayed in their vehicle that would enable them to park beyond the three-hour limit.
Above all else, she promotes a park-and-walk mindset, often giving visitors to her store a map and suggesting they leave their car on Union Avenue and walk the downtown district.
“I think it’s important that we take some action on it, but it doesn’t have to be expensive,” Wagner said. “At some point, the city will probably have to invest somewhere in terms of parking. But because it’s a very walk-able downtown, I’m a big proponent of park and walk. I would like to see parking in the areas outside of the downtown, but with adequate signage, maybe a park-and-walk sign. It really helps to have people walking around downtown. It’s like a mall. The mall stores do really well because people are walking around and pass all the stores. “
